


Cold Front

by notabadday



Category: Chicago Fire
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2015-05-06
Packaged: 2018-03-29 05:53:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3884884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notabadday/pseuds/notabadday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-breakup. Chicago faces a cold front and Dawson's heating system breaks. Inevitably, Casey hears about it and offers her a place to sleep for the night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold Front

Her knock is so quiet that if he hadn't been listening for it, it would have gone unnoticed. It's that gentle midnight knock that would scream booty call or emergency were it not for the texted warning. Is there another person on the earth that could knock at Casey's door like this? His invitation had come without hesitation, her reply without expectation. But suddenly it's midnight on his doorstep, _their_ doorstep, and they are faced with whatever comes next: the part they had chosen not to think about.

 "Hey," Dawson whispers quietly, with a conspiratorial smile. She slips passed him confidently, a light gym bag in her hand that she lifts to show him. It's a reminder of their plan, their lack of spontaneity. It feels like Dawson coming to his door at midnight could have been a rash move, perhaps on a particularly lonely evening when she's caught up thinking about the first night they spent together, or the night he proposed - the second time. Instead, it's planned. "Are you sure about this?"

 "Yeah," he says, relaxed. "It was your place once too. I don't want you to freeze. Severide's asleep but you have to go in my room." 

 Dawson searches his expression. "Where are you gonna sleep?"

 "On the floor," he replies, with a questioning intonation that gives away his expectation of resistance from Dawson. She proves him right.

 "I don't wanna turf you out of your bed. It's your home. _I'll_ sleep on the floor. I can rough it for one night. Besides, it's still preferable to the arctic temperatures at my place. No heating for days has really lowered my standards," she says with a laugh.

 Casey shakes his head with a smile.

 "Well, what if we just both sleep in the bed? I mean, it's _our_ bed anyway. It's not... Nothing's gonna happen if we sleep next to each other," Dawson reasons as he leads her into their former bedroom. It's dark but for the bedside light on Casey's side. She notices it hasn't changed. The room itself is unusually tidy though and she suspects it's in her honour.

 "Are you sure?"

 "Am I sure?" she repeats him with a laugh. "What are you gonna do? If you get handsy, I'll just push you out of the bed."

 Casey gives a relaxed laugh, replying, "Please. I do know how to exercise self-control. If you want handsy, maybe see if Severide'll share his mattress with you, though I think that might come with certain expectations."

 "Maybe I would if you hadn't suggested that this be a covert mission."

 "Yeah, I just don't want to get a load of it from Severide in the morning. And surely you don't want this spreading around the firehouse. Did you tell Brett?"

 She shakes her head reluctantly.

"See. You didn't tell Brett. I'm not telling Severide. Because we know what this is, right?"

 "Yeah, they wouldn't understand that, you know, even though things are different between us now, we can still be good friends to each other. And good friends help each other out when one friend loses a functioning heating system right before a cold front freezes the city and the other friend has a heated apartment. It's just a friend helping a friend." She adds an unconvincing shrug to punctuate her speech, before one firm, final, "Friends."

 "You just said 'friend' so many times, I thought The Rembrandts were gonna start playing," Casey replies. He takes her bag from her and places it onto the dresser he hasn't found a use for since she's been gone.

 Dawson rolls her eyes, a little embarrassed, before grabbing her pyjamas and heading off to the bathroom. Casey begins looking around the room in an attempt to find something to do. He's already dressed for bed but getting in before Dawson feels presumptuous. He eventually finds some laundry to fold, before his guest returns. She takes no notice of him, hastily moving towards her cosy old bed with enthusiasm. As she gets in, wrapping the covers tightly around her, Dawson lets out a moan of pleasure that startles Casey. He looks over at her, curled up with her eyes closed as she says, "It's _so_... warm."

 "I can see from here that you're hogging all the covers," he says in faux outrage. "Typical."

 Her eyes burst open in time with her mouth. "Hey."

 Casey just smiles, but it's a bright smile that's as much in his eyes as his lips. It's the kind of smile that invites only smiles in return and Dawson mirrors his expression without realizing, without meaning. It's a feeling that reminds her of the brief glances and coy smiles they exchanged before they got together, those butterflies-in-the-stomach moments that she would cherish for days without really comprehending. In this moment, as she lies wrapped in the warmth of the bed they used to share, it's as sad as it is happy.

 He climbs in next to her after ditching his laundry in a pile messier than the one he found it in. They both lie on their backs for a long, awkward moment before Dawson turns to curl up on her side, facing out of the bed. Casey takes the hint and reaches for the bedside light-switch. As his eyes adjust to the dark, he stares up at the ceiling, just listening to the small sounds that Dawson's movements make beside him. As her foot briefly brushes against his leg, his whole body tenses up.

 She falls asleep quickly. The comforting warmth of their former home, the place she thinks of as home even now, is enough to send her off. Beside her, Casey fidgets. He tries to sleep on his side facing out but can't find a comfortable position. He turns inward, relaxing as he lies parallel to Dawson but unsettled by the feeling he gets as he looks at her in front of him, with only the tip of her shoulder above the cover. He wonders if this might be the last time he she sleeps next to him and is oddly glad to have a last time to remember. The last time previously was unceremonious, lost in a routine with no exceptional detail to mark it.

 Not too long into Casey's psychological journey to enlightenment, Dawson turns in her sleep to face him. Though his eyes are closed, he feels her move and tenses again. When he opens them, he finds her looking back at him. Both are confronted by sudden intimacy.

 It's a long time before they speak or move. While it's awkward, there's an ease between them that remains. It's new. Walls are up. But it's still like the first time and every time that followed, just lying with their heads against the pillows as they take each other in.

 "Thank you for tonight," Dawson eventually says, breaking the silence with only a whisper. "This cold front has been hell at the apartment. My love for this city is being severely tested."

 She's being a distant kind of friendly that is hard for Casey to adjust to. He is conscious of his own failings when it comes to their performance of friendship. Being casual around Dawson doesn't come naturally, and he's burned by her constant cool. Eventually, he responds, "You've been putting on a pretty impressive cold front of your own lately," without realizing that the casual tone he had intended is instead brutal honesty, his own hurt permeating every word.

 "Casey." She looks at him, winded by his sudden directness.

He moves an arm around her instinctively and they move towards each other gently, a sudden, overwhelming release of restraint. In the centre of the bed, along the invisible line that had separated them into their respective halves, they lie as one. It's comfortable and familiar and warm, so very warm. Eventually, they fall asleep together.

 

* * *

 

 In the morning, Dawson wakes up before Casey. In their sleep, they've fallen apart and she is reminded, once again, of their separation. She scribbles a note for him, a firmly-meant thank you, and leaves him with just a piece of paper and a broken heart. She pauses in the doorway to look at Casey a final time, to wonder if she'll ever see him like this again and to wonder, for the umpteenth time, if there's any possibility that they're doing the right thing, and then she musters all of her strength to leave, not wanting to break his cover with Severide.

 Casey wakes up alone. Where he had expected to find Dawson, he is instead faced with only a note in her handwriting. It's simple. She has just written, "Thank you for last night. I owe you one. - Dawson x". His eyes linger on the kiss, longing for a real one.

 After he reads the note, his head falls back against the pillow. After a sigh of despair, he sits up to look around the room, surveying it for any trace of her. He notices the bin that he'd emptied only minutes before Dawson's arrival now has a scrunched up piece of paper at the bottom of it. Though he suspects this to be meaningless, Casey feels compelled by curiosity - or desperation. He forces himself out of the bed, which seems to have lost all of its warmth anyway, and picks the paper out of his bin, unfolding it in his hands.

 It's an earlier draft of Dawson's note. Or perhaps a later one. Amidst scribbles he can't make out, he reads, "I miss you" and "I feel so confused" and "Did you feel it too?"

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed it. Feedback is always greatly appreciated. xo


End file.
